How IT Can Leverage Consumerization

“Most traditional approaches to IT security we saw last year were fundamentally breaking down,” said Brian Madden of brianmadden.com during an interview at VMworld 2012.

Last year at VMworld in Las Vegas, Madden and I spoke about the consumerization of IT. To summarize, Madden pointed out that the world of IT had changed because users are no longer beholden to IT to get services. The endless variety of available Web services means they can circumvent IT security policies and more or less do whatever they want. Up until last year, IT had been playing a whack-a-mole game trying to stop the outgrowth of all these services.

Now that it’s 2012, the situation has gotten worse and better, said Madden. It’s worse in that there are more services available to end users giving them even more ways to get around IT’s policies. But what’s getting better is that IT departments are wrapping their head around the approach. They realize the old way of “No, you’re not allowed to do that” doesn’t cut it anymore.

The days of lock down are no longer an option. If users are putting sensitive data on Dropbox that means they want access to all their data from all their devices. It’s up to the corporation now to make that happen, said Madden. “You, as an IT department, have to realize that you are now in competition with every single random website and app.”

The IT Benefits of Consumerization

What Madden thinks is great about the consumerization of IT is that it provides crowdsourced ideas as to what services your users want and need. Use it as a cue to build or recruit these services within your organization. It could be so great that you should be convincing others to take advantage of these services as well.